Well, Mike's Sex Panther is getting closer to purring every day. This is Mike's first time building a bike. He's tapped the wealth of knowledge and favors from all sources; Spartan, ACME, His dad, Bulletproof, Lowbrow, Joker Machine, Benchmark, Eric the Welder, Rouser Rob, even me and McGoo have chipped in here and there. (Wow, that's a lot of links!) This past weekend's accomplishment was getting the seat set and the bottom structure of the sissy bar made. Mike and I bent the pieces up Friday night, he spent several hours grinding and fitting until they assembled the way he wanted and then Eric came in an helped him button it all up on Sunday. The sissy is going to be neat. The little bottom hoop is going to surround a heavily modified Belmit Rocket 88 tail light, then the uprights (still to be built) will go up around it, high enough to strap some gear to.

This is the first fully covered prototype for a new, smaller, chopper seat we've been quietly working on. This one has a lot of kick in the back and a much narrower shape. On Mike's Spartan frame, it perfectly fits the triangle formed behind the backbone. This seat is going to look best mounted up flush on a lot of frames. Mike had his heart set on springs, so he picked these up from Lowbrow. The interesting thing about this seat pan is the adjustable mounts. Instead of welded-in bungs or bolts, the pan is slotted to accept stainless carriage bolts (yes, they'll come with the seat). This way if a frame already has seat mounts welded to it, the seat can adjust the width in the back to fit. The front mounting points are done the same way so there is a lot of adjustability. Since Mike's frame is nice and tight and he's got some bolt heads under the seat where the oil bag hangs, he needed a little extra clearance. 30 seconds of McGoo on the grinder and the Biltwell Stainless Seat Hinge was a new Shorty model! We won't be making those any day soon, but it's a nice, quick mod if you ever need a little more room under there. These seats should be available in the late fall sometime. We're going to make them in a plain black cover like Mike's, a horizontally ribbed version and also as a blank seat pan and molded foam kit. Stay tuned!